Tuesday, February 28, 2012

From the Archives: Emma Roberts

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday Your Mama discussed a Los Angeles, CA post-modern perched on a ridge above Laurel Canyon and recently purchased by rock star and reality tee-vee judge Steven Tyler. Today we fish into our previously un-discussed celebrity real estate archive and come up with a modestly sized contemporary a few, short but twisted blocks away from Mister Tyler's new nest scooped up way back in December 2010 by up-and-coming young actress and Showbiz scion Emma Roberts.

A little nepotism never hurts in Hollywood and Miss Roberts, the 21-year old daughter of actor Eric Roberts and niece of Tinseltown royal Julia Roberts, got her big break as a teenager in 2004 when she landed the starring role as a high school art nerd in the very popular (and long ago canceled) teen-oriented sitcom Unfabulous, a program Your Mama had never before heard of until today. The well-connected lass went on to do a bunch of coming of age movies Your Mama ain't never heard of (Wild Child, Lymelife) and most recently she's dabbled in a growing list of rom-coms and dram-coms like the syrupy Valentine's Day and other silver screen gems we've never heard of like The Art of Getting By and Celeste and Jesse Forever.

for better or worse, Your Mama, more likely to read a gossip glossy than pay good money to see a romantic comedy our too-cynical and too-fat ass will most assuredly not appreciate, is far more familiar with Miss Roberts' date mates than we are her professional achievements. While still in her teens she was romantically squired by English actor/model Alex Pettyfer who hastily tattooed Miss Roberts' name on his wrist and just weeks ago rather ludicrously stripped down on Ellen Degeneres' daytime talk show while a bunch of lusty women and a few gays hooted, hollered and shrieked like there was no tomorrow. Miss Roberts, apropos of nothing real estate related, was widely reported to have recently split up with pouty-mouthed blond Chord Overstreet from Glee who Miss Roberts had long treated, so the salacious story goes, like her boy-bitch.

Sometime in 2010 and for reasons unknown to Your Mama, young Miss Roberts, then not even old enough to drink legally in a barroom, decided it was high time to decamp her rented West Hollywood condo and buy a single family house. Presumably she looked at any number of properties but according to multiple reliable sources eventually settled on a modestly-sized (if not exactly inexpensive) residence tucked discreetly into a fairly non-descript cul-de-sac high in the hills above Laurel Canyon.

Property records reveal pretty Miss Roberts, almost as generously lipped and wide mouthed as her Auntie Julia, paid either $1,246,000 or $1,250,000 for the gut-renovated residence. Listing information shows the low-profile but highly stylized house was originally built in 1949 and completely re-designed from 2008-10 by low-key L.A. based interior designer A.J. Bernard who may be modern-minded in
his approach to living situations but kicks it Old
School and does not appear, as far as Your Mama can tell, to maintain a professional presence on the interweb. The designer does, we were assured by someone we know who would know, have a email address for anyone who might like to engage his decorative and design talents and services.

Anyhoodles poodles, the sharply articulated but warmly finished single-story residence measures in at 2,142 square feet and includes 2 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms in the main house with another bathroom in the attached, two-room guest house that extends off the back of the house.

Listing photos suggest the previous owner used the smaller of the two rooms in the guest house (bottom two photos at top) as a fitness room/yoga studio and the larger room, with a pair of wood-framed French doors and canyon view, as a music studio. The variegated, medium-dark wood floors in the guest house—reclaimed from an unnamed French chateau according to listing information—are even more decoratively delectable than the undeniably magnificent (and straight-up expensive) 12-inch wide plank French oak floors that run throughout the main house.

A solid wood door with stainless steel—or maybe nickel—hardware and accents opens into a fairly narrow corridor that connects primary living/dining/entertaining areas that include a living/family room with marble-topped wet bar, puzzle table with a pair of Nakashima (or Nakashima-like) chairs, and a complete wall of custom-built, floor-to-ceiling oak cabinets that house and hide (among other things) state-of-the art audio and visual equipment. Hinged pocket doors open to reveal a flat screen tee-vee and smartly slide back and disappear into the cabinetry. Wood-framed glass doors stretch along one entire wall fold back accordion-style to a slim terrace that steps off to a flat expanse of lawn perfect for piddling pooches and child-sized Slip 'n Slide but missing, as far Your Mama is concerned, a spa and/or a plunge-sized swimming pool.

The dining area of the eat-in kitchen, anchored and defined by a massive concrete fireplace with raised hearth and inset display niche instead of a mantel, has a built-in buffet and a single, very minimal (and completely appropriate) floating shelf for the uncluttered display of knickknacks, gewgaws, bagatelles and/or other hoozymagoozies and what-have-yous.

A center island with two-seat snack counter and unusual, in-line range top separate the dining area from the sleek but hardly sterile kitchen where custom oak cabinets hold a plethora of integrated Euro-style stainless steel appliances. The counter tops, according to listing information are book matched Calacatta gold and make Your Mama's skin go goose pimply with real estate envy. The children will note how Mister A.J. Bernard thoughfully thought of that household's animal occupants and designed the island's marble counter top to water fall dramatically over the edge and connect to a swank marble pad set into the floor for the dog or cats food and water bowl.

Each of the two bedrooms in the main house has access to a private and well-equipped and -conceived if not particularly huge bathing, ablution and evacuation facility. The guest bedroom—with but a sad, sliver of windows set above eye level—makes use of a standard-sized bathroom with Old-Timey honeybee tiles on the floor that, to be totally honest, feel a bit tense against the graphic linearity of the much more contemporary feeling (and lovely) custom-built oak vanity.

Like the living room the master bedroom, large enough for a separate sitting area with built-in floating bookshelves and various other niches, spills out to the backyard through a complete wall of folding floor-to-ceiling wood framed glass doors. The attached sky lit master bathroom has a marvelous Calacatta gold marble vanity and a curtain wall of frameless glass that separates the bathroom area from the over-sized steam shower with built-in marble bench.

The backyard may be far from huge but it is notably large and flat for a house in the Hollywood Hills and probably large and flat enough for Miss Roberts to install on small in-ground swimming pool were she so inclined.

Prior moving on up to the tippy-tops of Laurel Canyon Miss Roberts shacked up for a short time in the legendary Granville Towers
building in West Hollywood, a 7-story, French Normandy confection once
home to scads of other medium- and high- profile entertainment industry
peeps like Nicole Scherzinger, Portia di Rossi, David Bowie, Rock
Hudson, Mickey Rourke and Marilyn Monroe.

Not content, perhaps, with just a west coast abode, Miss Roberts was also spotted as recently as last September poking and peeking around for a pied a terre in New York City's tourist- and shopper-packed SoHo neighborhood. It's not clear to Your Mama if Miss Roberts was looking to lease or purchase a pad in the The Big Apple and, since we don't know a donkey from hand puppet, Your Mama has absolutely no idea if the second tier starlet leased or purchased a place in New York City.

God, I had to Google Emma Roberts, Chord Overstreet and Alex Pettyfer. I'm so out of touch with the younger generation of what sadly passes now as Hollywood. Today's crop is about as interesting as this house.

Only people in LA could think this pile of junk looks good. This thing looks like a construction trailer and I am not even kidding. Marble goes on the countertop, not the sides and the floor. Why would you feed your dogs or cats in the kitchen where you cook and eat?

ok, you hick, where do you feed your pets? in the barn? welcome to reality for the rest of the animal-loving world where we keep the dog bowl and water dish in the kitchen for ease of clean up. /eyeroll

I kind of like this house. It's a perfect bachelorette pad for a young twenty something starlet. All that blond wood and nickel/stainless accents just screams "hip young thing."

I wonder if the previous owner will throw in that advant garde Russian vibration exercise machine thingie in the corner of the "guest" room. It's just the thing for soothing old bones but I suspect a young person could find other uses for it besides exercise.